Barbara Masekela

The director of arts and culture for the African National Congress was having trouble remembering her New York fax number. She thumbed through her phone directory trying to find it, smiled when she thought she had it, then frowned when she lost it again. "I'm sorry," Barbara Masekela sighed as she apologized to a visitor in her Santa Monica hotel room. "It's been a long, rough trip."

The director of arts and culture for the African National Congress was having trouble remembering her New York fax number. She thumbed through her phone directory trying to find it, smiled when she thought she had it, then frowned when she lost it again. "I'm sorry," Barbara Masekela sighed as she apologized to a visitor in her Santa Monica hotel room. "It's been a long, rough trip."

Re "South Africa's land grab," Opinion, Oct. 1 The South African government has not taken, and will not take, the land of anyone, farmer or otherwise, without compensation or due process of law. To do so would be unconstitutional. Our constitution gives the state the power of eminent domain to take land for a legitimate public purpose. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that eliminating "the social and economic evils of a land oligopoly" is a legitimate public purpose. We are using eminent domain to redress a land oligopoly resulting from generations of legalized racial discrimination.

Twenty-one years after expelling South Africa, the International Olympic Committee conditionally recognized the country's new nonracial Olympic committee Wednesday and kept alive the possibility of a return to world competition in the 1992 Summer Games. But the IOC laid down five conditions for lifting the moratorium on international competition with South Africa and gave that nation's Olympic committee six months to meet them.

As Oliver Tambo, president of the African National Congress, entered the hall where an international anti-apartheid conference was taking place here, the South African delegation of nearly 200 erupted in singing and dancing and then enthusiastic shouts of "Viva Tambo, viva!" For Tambo, the moment was equally emotional--a demonstration, he felt, of the broad support that the ANC has among South Africa's black majority even though the group has been outlawed since 1960.

This movie had all the right credentials. The writer was Athol Fugard, a playwright with an impeccable anti-apartheid pedigree. And the story, "The Road to Mecca," was a classic South African tale of artistic freedom. But before filming began in South Africa with a prominent American in the cast, the black liberation movement objected.

For a quarter century, he languished in apartheid's jail, his famous face hidden from all but his closest relatives and a handful of friends. Now, a year after his walk to freedom, millions upon millions around the world recognize the gently lined features of Nelson Mandela. And still the Mandela magic, spun by his 27-year absence from the public eye and nurtured for the past year by his regal presence, shows no signs of waning. The black liberation leader has held dozens of news conferences, yet reporters still cram into the airless conference room at African National Congress headquarters in Johannesburg to hear him. He has addressed hundreds of rallies and meetings, from Los Angeles to Tokyo to Soweto, yet he still packs the world's halls and stadiums.